She insisted that she didn’t mind, but that was, to his way of thinking, almost worse. He would almost rather that she were as frustrated as he was. But he had the grim feeling that sex for her was now yet another duty, and not a joy. Oh, she loved him. Of that, he had no doubt. But there was no passion left. And looking at himself in a mirror, seeing the white hair and lined face, the wreck that age had made of him, he could understand why.
So, no. There had been no real reason to keep the logbooks up to date of late. But the suggestion that Sigrun had picked up some sort of fertility powers, coupled to the reminder of their increasingly monastic life, raised Adam’s hackles. “Nevermind that,” he said, tersely.
Her voice softened a little. “I’ve been trying to help with the arthritis, but I need to do more reading on the human heart before I can . . . do more than I have, to help with that.”
Adam froze. “I thought you couldn’t do that. I thought . . . only battle-wounds.”
She stared out the nearby window. “Things change.”
“And you’ve been . . . doing things to me, without my knowledge?” Adam tried to quell the surge of resentment, even as he pulled his hand away from hers. It was irrational, but the edge of fear and anger in him was very sharp indeed. “You’ve been keeping me alive?”
“No. I have attempted to keep you healthy and comfortable. I knew you wouldn’t accept any prolonging of your span.” A bleak edge in her voice, and for a moment, Adam could see again his vision of her visiting him in a nursing home and Sophia in the asylum, once a week, until one or both of them died. She stood now, and crossed to the window, leaning against it.
The vision gave him a moment’s pause. He took a deep breath, and said as calmly as he could, “You should have talked to me. Pets get taken to the vet. It’s not that I’m not grateful, but you don’t have the right to treat me like a laboratory rat.”
She turned towards him, her eyes narrowing. “Actually, that does sound ungrateful. I intervened minimally. I diminished your brain’s response to the pain signals from your nerves at first, and then depressed the inflammation in your body from the arthritis. It’s all injury-related in you, so I’ve repaired worn cartilage, and fixed the damage from old wounds, as well. I have not experimented on you. But you’ve been my first non-combatant patient besides birthing mothers.”
Clinical, calm. Distant. It wasn’t what he wanted out of her. He missed his old Sigrun, the one with the shy sense of humor behind her reserve and her mask of coldness. He missed the fire in her eyes, whether he saw it in combat or in bed. And he winced, inwardly, at being called a non-combatant. He knew he was a civilian. He’d been one since 1987. It still irked him.
Adam waved a hand angrily, and then ran it over his hair. “Not really my point. My point is, you should have told me what you were doing. And that you were capable of doing it.”
More force in his voice than he’d intended, but it got the sense of electricity in the air that he’d been looking for as her eyes narrowed again. “Would you like the arthritis back? I can stop encouraging your heart to beat properly. You can go back to wearing elasticized socks to keep the excess water from the congestive heart failure from building in your ankles. Lower back pain as the nerves are sawed on by the bad discs.” Sigrun’s stare was cool. “You haven’t minded being able to walk more easily. You’ve sung the praises of this Mishlev medication you’re on.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Would you like it all back?”
He exhaled. Put that way? “No.”
“Good. I am not entirely certain how I would even go about putting it all back without killing you.” Her eyebrows lifted slightly. It both was, and was not quite, a joke.
There stared at each other. Adam wished he could close the gap between them; they’d started off, sitting side-by-side at the table, but now, she was across the room, and as untouchably distant as the stars themselves. He stood, and crossed to her. Touched her hair, lightly, trying to close the chasm he could feel yawning between them. “The healing . . . that’s from Tlaloc, too?” His words were a peace offering. A little hint of normalcy.
“Not . . . quite.” Sigrun swallowed, the muscles of her throat working.
“I take it there’s more?” he asked, gruffly, as his stomach tightened again.
She shrugged, and turned back to the window to gaze once more at Freya’s apple tree. “Prometheus told me that the othersight I’d developed after Supay’s death wasn’t seiðr, nor was that something forced upon me by Freya. From Supay, death. I already had my fair share of it as a valkyrie, but from him . . . more.” Her face was blank. “From Hel, more death. From Loki, seiðr, though I fought it. And from Baal-Samem, night. Every time Lassair or Saraid gained in power, so did I. And I locked it away. Until last year.” She turned and looked at him, her expression bleak. “You asked me once, if I would ever make Heracles’ choice, and burn away my mortality, and I told you no.” She looked away.
The adrenaline was back in full force, graying the edges of his vision. Combat focus, every sense hyperaware. No way of denying it, or seeing the information differently. “You’re . . . an entity.”
“Yes.”
Behind his eyes, his world shattered for a moment. He knew that gods existed. He’d met them. He’d killed them. Tren was . . . more or less . . . one of them. But not Sig. Sig had always clung to her mortality. He’d watched her growing in power, developing, certainly, but it had never occurred to him that she’d ever be anything other than a god-born. Perhaps a powerful one, but still a mortal. Inasmuch as he’d thought about what she would do after his death, he’d pictured her finally becoming a general, or training valkyrie and bear-warriors at the Odinhall. Every thought he’d had about promotion and development for her over the years had been positional and career-oriented.
This was neither. This was a change of state. A change of being on a fundamental level. And yet, he struggled with it. Everything in his background cried out against it, in fact—his entire culture was founded on the notion of being humble before god. On avoiding the arrogance and presumption that led men and women to consider themselves equal to a god. And yet, this was still . . . Sig. Same gray eyes. Same smile, though he so rarely saw it of late. “Sig . . .” His voice was hoarse. I’m losing her. No. I think I already lost her. I think I lost her the day I was born. But I’ll be damned if I’m not going to fight for her. “You never talked to me about a decision that affected both of us.” His words sounded ludicrous even to his own ears.
Another tear coursed down her cheek, and froze. “I have taken pains not to let it affect your life in anything but positive ways. Such as being able to come home every night. Maintaining your health and comfort.” She paused, and her voice broke as she went on. “What were you going to say, Adam? Go be a goddess? Don’t go be a goddess? By the time I knew there was a choice, the choices were all behind me—or I never had a choice about them at all. The only real choice I had was acceptance, or resistance. I tried resistance for twenty years, for your sake. I chose acceptance for the world.”
He shook for a moment. “You make it sound very noble, and you’ve never been one to grab at power for power’s sake.” The chasm between them was very deep indeed, at the moment. “But for god’s sake, why? Because of Prometheus? Isn’t that the same trap of prophecy as your sister fell into, only out of a different mouth?” Frustration and anger filled him, as he fought with words to undo what had been done. To change her mind. To change her decisions.
Sigrun turned towards him. “Sophia once told me that my wyrd was my wyrd, because I would make the choices I would make because I couldn’t not make them, and be who I was. When Prometheus beat it into my head what I was, I realized that I couldn’t afford to be who I had always been anymore. I had to become someone else. And it took me a while to realize that I hadn’t been who I’d been . . . not for a long time. And that pretending anything else was just another lie.”
Adam half-closed his eyes, pained. “So you think your life—our lives—we
re a lie.”
Sigrun reached out and stroked his face with her cool fingers. “You’ve been the best part of my existence, Adam.” Her voice was choked. “But I’ve been a fiction of my own invention for a very long time. I fought so hard to stay mortal for your sake—”
“For my sake?” The words were almost a shout. “How could that be for me, Sigrun? I’ve always known that you were god-born!”
She closed her eyes, and he could see her forcing herself to calmness. “Because no marriage can survive such a great inequality,” she said, after a moment. “Livorus and Poppaea’s chilly domestic arrangement survived because it wasn’t really a marriage, but a financial agreement to live together and have children. It survived the fact that he was more intelligent, more powerful, more political, and wealthier than she was, and with entirely separate interests, simply because neither of them gave a damn about each other, and rarely spent more than five minutes in the same room together.” She opened her eyes, raw distress in her gaze. “I embraced my mortality with you. I shared my humanity with you.” Almost begging him to understand now.
"What, so now when people get married, they subdivide themselves? I married all of you, Sig. I surely gave you all of me." He wasn’t even sure why he was so angry. Part of it was that he’d been shut out of it. Even if it hadn’t been his choice to make . . . she hadn’t shared it with him. And he didn’t understand why. And part of it was the fact that she was slipping away, dissolving between his fingers like ephemeral mist. As if all their life together—the years he’d cherished with her—were a fiction. A lie.
“And I gave you all of me that I was when we married."
"So now if people grow or change, that's withheld? Funny, I don't remember signing a prenuptial agreement to that effect." The words were harsh, and bitter, and she turned away again, sharply. “I’ve kept few secrets from you, Sig.” Just one. Sophia’s fucking prophecy. Which, if you’re right about breaking Sophia’s fate, you may never even need to know about. I should actually approve of your actions, because it could break my fate, too . . . couldn’t it? He took a breath, and tried to calm down. “Honesty. Trust. Loyalty. Fairness. I don’t seem to be getting any of these from you anymore.”
All color drained from her face. “You question my loyalty?” Her voice was stricken. “For the past twenty years, I’ve been at war. Nine months on this front. Three months home, and then another nine months elsewhere. Since . . . acknowledging what I am . . . I’ve been home every night to take care of you—”
“Like a potted plant. A pet.” His words were terse and angry.
“I do not see it that way, and you know it!” The electrical charge was very evident between them now, and Adam’s skin tingled with it. She held up a finger at him, glaring. “I’ve been honest with you about everything that mattered in our relationship. What I’ve become, doesn’t concern you.”
He’d wanted her angry, and it was glorious, in a way. Cleansing. And yet, also sickening. He didn’t want to fight with her. He wanted to put his arms around her and have it all go away. But her words triggered a visceral response in him. Outrage and anger. “How can it not concern me!”
“You follow the god of Abraham!” That was a shout. “I stay as human as I can. I only take away your aches and pains! Other than that, when has anything about the gods of Valhalla ever been a concern of yours, Adam?”
“They’ve become an acute concern to me because what they do impacts you!” He was almost panting now in his agitation. “Loki was a concern of mine, because of what he did to you. And I can’t help but notice that you seem to be on remarkably good terms with the entity that cursed you.” Adam glared at her. “Why haven’t you asked him to undo the curse, Sigrun? Explain that.”
He’d knocked her off-balance with that non sequitur. It was related to, but off-line from his general argument, and asking the question borrowed principles of judo and applied it to argumentation. Attack the unprotected side. Sigrun spluttered, and then threw up her hands. “Because it doesn’t matter anymore, and because I don’t want Sophia’s future to happen!”
“Doesn’t matter to you, or doesn’t matter to me?”
He lobbed the grenade into the conversation, and watched Sigrun turn aside to cover her face with her hands, but he regretted now that he’d even brought it up. She took a breath or two, and finally raised her eyes to stare back at him. “Adam,” she said, with tenuous calm, “you’re sixty-four years old. Your older brother is a great-grandfather—”
“So? You’re still young. We’re not completely celibate. You could have a child, if you wanted one, and if Loki removed his damned curse.” Adam exhaled. “You don’t want one anymore.”
Clouds were rolling in overhead. Her emotional control was shot, and he was pushing her on a vulnerable side. “It doesn’t matter because it doesn’t matter. It would have mattered twenty years ago. But if the choice is between that and seeing Sophia’s prophecy come true—”
“How very noble of you—”
“Damn it, Adam! I would give you a child if I could, since that is the only form of immortality you are likely to accept! But I can’t and you won’t, so leave it alone!” Thunder crashed outside, and wind began to tear through the branches of the trees. Apples and unripe cherries fell to the ground, and leaves dashed themselves against the window. “This isn’t about us having a child, and you know it. Bringing it up was unfair—”
“This is about you holding things back,” he retorted, though he acknowledged that her words were true. It didn’t stop him from adding, however, “It’s all a part of the same pattern.”
They stared at each other, and his breath was still short as he managed to calm himself, and returned to his original topic. “So. You’ve . . . known for a year, then.”
“I hated keeping it from you. But I knew you would have precisely this reaction.” She flicked her fingers at him. “I knew you’d be angry at me. I knew you couldn’t handle the information, and I knew you’d hate me for it.”
“Hate you for it?” Adam’s temper rose again. “You’re being dramatic. Stop putting words into my mouth, and don’t presume to know what I can and can’t handle. What, I can’t handle you?”
“No.” She shook her head, her expression suddenly deeply sorrowful. “You cannot.”
The sorrow didn’t temper the matter-of-factness in her tone . . . and that alone was enough to make his blood pressure spike. “And why not? Trennus seemed to handle Lassair and Saraid pretty well—” Bad example, he realized, as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
Sigrun gave him a look. “He handled his relationship with Lassair as any young man would—as a gift from a smiling god. He was rapidly in over his head, but did the best he could. Ten years later, he was spirit-touched, and on more even footing, but still being carried away by Lassair. Saraid helped anchor him. And now he’s a demigod himself, on more or less even footing with Saraid, and Lassair’s off trying to find herself . . . and you’re uncomfortable with him now. He’s your best friend, and you won’t interact with him on anything but the human level. The level of the past. You barely handle the fact that Tren’s a king now, better than you handle his . . . divinity.” Adam opened his mouth to retort, but Sigrun went on, relentlessly, “You wouldn’t take a house in Burgundoi with me. You wouldn’t take a house up in Caledonia, near Trennus. You won’t leave this house, the past, and while Tren’s lived in the north for a year, you won’t visit him there. He had to beg you to go into the Veil with him, and you’ve never gone back.” Sigrun poked his shoulder, lightly, with a finger.
Adam opened his mouth, wanting to protest. He hadn’t gone back because the Veil didn’t matter. It wasn’t real. All right, it was real, but nothing mattered there, and he had a shadow there that he thought wasn’t just going to loom behind him forever, but might, in fact, consume him.
But he couldn’t say anything about Sophia’s prophecy to Sigrun. He’d seen how she reacted just to an image of the Assassin. The damnable pr
int of the Nefertiti tomb wall was still up in his parents’ rooms; Sigrun hadn’t redecorated their suite after his mother had died. But she’d put a sheet over the picture frame.
The silence between them was uncannily loud. Sigrun took a breath, and went on more quietly, “I’ve always tried to meet you on the common level of our shared humanity. And you can’t accept either me or Trennus on any level that isn’t human. And the only parts of me left that are human, are those which pertain to you. Maybe to our friends’ children. And in time, those parts will probably diminish, and fall away.”
His stomach lurched. No. God, no. You’ve always been so exquisitely balanced between the ape and the angel, neshama. But he was still primed to fight, anger overrunning the sorrow and the horror in him, and the words he’d meant to say twisted on his lips. “And you’re proud of that?”
“No. But sacrificing what I was, for what I could become? A fair price to pay, to break the future.”
“So what’s next? Wait until I fall over dead, and then cut away what’s left of yourself?” He wasn’t sure what made him angrier. That she was just waiting for him to die, or that she would give up everything that made her, her. The person he’d loved for close to forty years. Both infuriated him.
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